Goldkin @Goldkin@awoo.space

So, what is to be done?

Here, the author provides a few cursory suggestions, including policy changes, general preparedness for smear campaigns, and stepping away from sites like Twitter and Facebook entirely and to "rebuild civil society on the ground, not online." I'm inclined to agree, though I think this argument is somewhat extreme, and it ignores the notion of rebuilding these platforms without making them amenable to marketing campaigns and legions of online trolls and bots.

I shy away from calling this a "fake news" problem, because the problem isn't sources of disinformation, but rather the structure of the platforms themselves. And here, the author launches into how adversarial actors -- including incubator fora like 4chan, terrorist organizations, and nation states -- use these ecosystems to push their preferred narratives. Unmoored from other sources of truth, these actors cultivate or create opinion leaders that can weaponize preferred narratives.

The narrative trips over and self-congratulates itself in several places, detracting from what is otherwise an astute observation. Early adopters of online discussion fora and media still had centralized sources of truth to turn to, be they news sites (ie, via RSS readers) or blogs concentrating expertise. This is not true for the current social media environment, with sites like Reddit, 4chan, Facebook, and Twitter instead choosing to elevate the loudest voices in the room.

Specifically, it lays out the premise that, in the context of pervasive attempts to create filter bubbles -- both by social media companies trying to divide marketable segments of a population, and by populist opinion leaders and state-sponsored actors trying to push particular narratives -- social media has come unmoored from the sources of truth that normally bind societies together. Instead, these sites are now creating irreconcilable tribes of self-enforcing confirmation bias.

I have been doing a lot of dark reading lately on social media, which coincidentally, is why I've been so scarce. I've been revisiting my relationship with how I post online and what sources of media I consume, in the context of troll armies and other afflictions over on birdsite and its brethren.

In that context, I ran across this book: https://www.amazon.com/Messing-Enemy-Clint-Watts-ebook/dp/B072HLRW6Y. While provocative and redundant in its narrative, it provides a fair summary of what's happening to online social fora.

Hi, I’m Goldkin, and I dramatically overthink this kind of thing when it’s okay to just be a person.

In a nutshell: the concept that everything I say, even in direct communication, may feature in public aggregation, without context, has substantially chilled my speech.

That is something that _does not happen_ in privately maintained Masto instances (in fact, it’s one of the main benefits of the platform). But I constantly need to remind myself of that, and that it’s okay to have frivolous conversations again, without expecting it to train algorithms on my behavior.

So I’ve been deviling with a more substantive post to explain why I’ve been so quiet and sparse on replies. Some of that is personal, and some other part of that is wrapped up in keeping my antenna up while watching the second season of Watergate in uspol (ugh, ugh, ugh).

But there’s this other bucket of stuff best described as having been trained by birdsite, most notably “likes are shares” and “polls are marketing data”. And it’s led to habits I need to reprogram.

Traediras did a super cool thing for me (as part of a commission), and I feel the need to share it:
https://awoo.space/media/PtO3OtwUUoSigy-J5nY

Also, can anyone following here recommend a good crosspost tool that can manage multiple Masto instances (+ birdsite)?

Bitlbee is good for reading in plain text, and Amaroq is good for mobile, but neither do multimedia crossposts.

I am still around in lurker mode. Low emotional energy from unconnected life things has kept me in mostly read-only mode. But general reminder that I am still around and okay.

I finally had a chance to upgrade my home server, and in doing so, gave Mastodon-in-IRC a try (via Bitlbee). It’s not complete, but it’s a good reminder that plain text remains a good presentation model for social.

It also sorts birdsite by time when I point it there, which at this point feels like cheating.

I am still around. I’m working on smaller art projects and personal things. I’ve also been teaching myself how to PSVR to play the silly FFXV fishing game. They’ve helped.

The world has been hard for me to take lately, and I’ve had trouble communicating past long screeds of internalized anxiety. Pardon that this makes me distant; I’m trying my best.

I hope things are good in your corner of the world, the orthocosm, and your chosen corners of pocket reality. I’m rooting for you. 💖

My Skype was briefly compromised. I flipped its credentials and set it to closed, but if you received a dubious link from me, don’t click.

Interestingly, they may be suffering an incident, so if your account also gets popped, here’s some info: https://twitter.com/goldkin/status/969851164878553088

This is possibly the most important essay I’ve read in the past year (as in 365 days): http://www.rookiemag.com/2018/01/editors-letter-75/